Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
An image forming apparatus may be any peripheral that produces a human-readable representation of graphics and/or text onto a physical medium. Example image forming apparatuses include printers and multifunction peripherals (MFPs). An image forming apparatus may be utilized for various tasks such as printing, scanning, and faxing, as well as many other uses.
In recent years, the number of printing devices in a typical office environment has grown substantially. It is not uncommon for an office to have over one hundred printing devices operating within a local network. Having many printing devices with various features (e.g. copying, facsimile, color printing, and various duplex options) interspersed within an office may provide a convenience for users. However, accessing a particular printing device at a computing device typically involves identifying it from a list of printing device names. As a result, finding a desired printing device can be a difficult task when little information about that printing device is available.
Typically, a user is required to install a printing device driver before accessing the various features of a printing device or performing an action in association with that printing device. However, installing printing device drivers on a computing device for all printing devices within a network may be difficult. Furthermore, installing such a large number of printing device drivers may require a user to sort through and select a desired printing device from a long list of printing devices for each print operation, which can be time consuming.